Are students penalized for reading the title?

Students are never penalized for reading the title of a text. It does not affect their accuracy score or reading rate, (except inasmuch as they take longer to start reading the text).

If the student reads the exact title of the text, we will not report that on the running record. If the student attempts to read the title but does not read it accurately, we will report it as an insertion because we are unable to tell the difference between the student attempting to read the title and the student simply inserting other words.